Commvault buys Hedvig in storage and data management unification play

Commvault is buying Hedvig, a software-defined storage startup, for $225m.

This is a bet on data unification and operational efficiency by Commvault, which cites a Gartner forecast that software-defined storage (SDS) running in the cloud will become the dominant method of building multi-cloud storage infrastructures by 2023.

Hedvig CEO and co-founder Avinash Lakshman said operational efficiency is achieved “via complete protocol consolidation (block, file, and object storage) on a single API-driven platform,” that spans geographies and multiple clouds, and covers primary and secondary storage. This is what Hedvig’s Universal Data Plane software, running on AWS, Azure and the Google cloud, provides.

Commvault CEO Sanjay Mirchandani said: “Hedvig’s technology is in its prime. It has been market tested and proven. We believe that the convergence of storage, multi cloud, and cloud native technologies, combined with our leadership in data management will accelerate the movement towards modern applications built on containers and microservices. Commvault will set the bar for the unification of storage and data management for the future.”

The data management vendor says businesses face data fragmentation with data reposing in multiple public clouds as well as on-premises. Data comes from different sources; on-premises and public clouds, virtualized and containerised servers and IoT devices. And it is stored in different formats; block, file and object.

Avinash Lakshman (left) and Sanjay Mirchandani (right)

Hedvig was founded in 2012 by Avinash Lakshman and his brother, VP of engineering Srinivas Lakshman. Total funding is $52m.

All Hedvig’s staff join Commvault and stay in their Santa Clara HQ, five minutes walk from Commvault’s office there.

The Commvault and Hedvig software products will continue to be sold stand-alone and a roadmap is being developed to bring them together.

This is Commvault’s first acquisition under the helm of Mirchandani, who was appointed in February, and it marks a change of direction for the company which hitherto has focused on organic growth.